Summary

//Napoleon Dynamite //(Twentieth Century Fox: Fox Searchlight Pictures: MTV Videos, 1994) is an American motion picture that tells the story of the title character, an odd and depressive, but strangely lovable high school student from Preston, Idaho. He lives with his dune-bike riding grandmother, his nerdy 32-year old brother Kip, and with a narcissistic, immature, and delusional Uncle Rico. Hilariously, this outlandishly non-traditional family keeps a pet llama named Tina whom they feed Stove Top Stuffing, while they themselves live on a nearly as limited diet of cheap steak, cheese nachos, and “kay-sa-dillas” (quesadillas). Napoleon is something of a social outcast at school, where he is ostracized and tormented by bullies. To put it mildly, Napoleon has unusual interests and a lively imagination. He concocts fantastical stories about hunting and fishing exploits to impress his peers; in his notebook, he draws pictures of the “liger,” the cross-bred offspring of a lion and a tiger, which he claims is “bred for its skills in magic”; and, when called upon in social studies class to report on a “current event,” he tells a straight-faced tall tale of Scottish law enforcement’s attempts to blow up the Loch Ness Monster. Napoleon becomes friends with a Mexican immigrant student named Pedro, and together they befriend a shy, self-conscious young lady named Deb. In spite of her almost debilitating shyness, Deb actively attempts to raise money for college by selling “boondoggles” and offering “glamour shot” services to the local populous. Napoleon and Deb begin to develop feelings for each other; but, because Napoleon is too shy to ask her out, the outgoing Pedro instead takes Deb to the school dance, and Napoleon is forced to use his problematic skills as a portraitist (and his Uncle Rico’s coercive influence) to acquire a date. At the dance, when that coerced and reluctant date deserts Napoleon, Pedro allows him to dance with Deb, and young love is enkindled. Meanwhile we are treated to the misadventures of Uncle Rico and brother Kip, who both seem to be living through a lengthy period of extended adolescence. Despite being in their 40s and 30s, respectively, they suffer under childish misapprehensions of a sort that is usually associated with adolescence. For instance, they are both deluded about their physical prowess, they believe in (and even attempt) time travel, and they succumb to a couple of rather preposterous get-rich-quick schemes. Kip wants to raise money to send to his internet girlfriend, LaFawnduh, so that she can come and visit him. Uncle Rico, who is obsessed with the idea of reliving the year 1982 (when, as he believes, he //almost// had a chance to save the day in the Idaho high school football state championship), is trying to forget his past failure as a second-string quarterback and the loss of his ex-girlfriend. Another hilarious subplot is introduced when Kip and Uncle Rico try to humiliate Napoleon by bragging about their business success. Napoleon responds by getting a job at a chicken farm that pays him dollar an hour. One of Uncle Rico’s schemes involves an attempt to sell breast enhancement supplements to the female population of Preston, including the adolescent girls. The love-story subplot becomes complicated when Uncle Rico tries to sell the breast enhancement supplements to Deb, telling her, falsely, that Napoleon said she would be interested in them. At the school dance, Pedro gets the idea to run for class president and Deb, Napoleon and Pedro start a campaign to get Pedro elected. Pedro’s opponent is a popular, pretty blonde named Summer Wheatley, who is aided by a cow-towing boyfriend named Don. During the election rally, Pedro must make a speech, but he suddenly becomes full of self-doubt, depressed, and nearly tongue-tied. Napoleon tells Pedro to simply tell the students that he will “make all their wildest dreams come true.” The boys are surprised to learn that they are expected, after the speech, to perform a skit. Napoleon, coincidentally, has been practicing disco dancing in an attempt to acquire an “awesome skill” that will impress Deb. After Pedro’s rather disastrous speech, Napoleon—thinking on his feet—comes up with the idea of fulfilling Pedro’s skit requirement by performing his dance moves for the assembled students. He hands a mix tape to the stage manager, and gives a startlingly virtuosic performance, at the end of which he receives a standing ovation. Pedro ultimately wins the election and thus the story becomes, in a sense, an absurdist parable of American ethnocentrism, in which the hapless Mexican immigrant student’s candidacy (and self-image) is rescued by the “awesome skills” of the white American. The filmmakers contrive happy endings for all of the protagonists. Uncle Rico finds his ex-girlfriend, Kip marries LaFawnduh and moves to Michigan, Pedro wins the election and becomes class president, and Deb and Napoleon unite in a seemingly symbolic game of “tetherball”. There is an “after-credit” portion of the film that depicts Kip’s wedding to LaFawnduh. During this scene, Napoleon rides into the out-door wedding scene heroically on a “honeymoon stallion,” asks Pedro to take his picture, and presents the horse to Kip and his bride, who ride the stallion off into the sunset.
 * Summary **